The Nature and Criteria of

Theological Scholarship:
An Evangelical Critique and Plan
Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
L' o n Browning has undertaken the ambitious task of describing just what
constitutes good theological scholarship and research, both in the setting of
religious studies departments and in theological schools that have as their main
task preparing persons for Christian ministry. Even as he begins, there is an
acknowledgment that religious studies programs " . . . may no longer be
sufficiently sympathetic to the goals of theological education to adequately
prepare scholars for this purpose."
Consequently, there is more that motivates his essay than an attempt to set
forth the definitions and criteria of theological scholarship. There is the recog-
nition that there is a growing division between departments of religious studies,
which have generally been responsible for educating the larger number of the
professors in theological schools, and that the demands for the theological
curriculum in theological schools need to be more responsive to the Christian
ministry at the present time. Browning states that, "The underlying concern that
motivates this essay can be simply stated: is there a way to state the relation of
theological studies and religious studies so that the latter does not function to
undermine, or in any way to denigrate, the former?"
1
Such candor and openness
to dialogue are most courageous and welcome signs for which we are all
grateful.
However, the mere recognition of the existence of "conflict" and "mistrust"
along with sets of new criteria for defining and evaluating where scholarship is
rightfully taking place, will not prove to be an "open sesame" for the enormous
number of issues that lie just below the surface of this problem. Or to put it in
other words, the tensions mentioned here may be resolvable, but they will test
how willing we are to be truly pluralisticfor instance, with the positions of
evangelicals
2
and to tackle structures that lie at the very "soul" of the modern
university
3
and theological schoolfor example, the general movement from
paleo-orthodox belief to established nonbelief.
This, of course, is not the only issue troubling the seminaries in this area of
scholarship and curriculum. For almost two decades there has been a call for the
seminaries to modify their teaching of the theoretical disciplines in order to
Theological Education, Volume XXXII, Number 1 (1995): 57-70
An Evangelical Cri t i que and Pl an
provide for a more adequate basis on which the practice of ministry might be
carried out in the churches. One of the early voices in this cry for some type of
academic reform was James Smart, formerly professor of biblical interpretation
at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He sized up the problem this way:
Consistently for years there has been an underestimating of the
distance between these two contexts [seminary and church] in
which the Bible is interpreted, as though it were a very short
and easy step the seminary graduate has to take from one to the
other Scholars and churchmen [sic] must come awake to the
fact that some of the most capable students have not been
making that journey very successfully from school to church,
from fact to faith, from historical record to sermon text, from
cultural artifact to Christian revelation.
4
Smart's hope for solving the problem rested in how biblical theology was
taught, for that was the discipline that undergirded the systematic theology on
which church practice was based. But that suggestion came at the end of the
reign of the Biblical Theology Movement of Existential or Neo-Orthodox theol-
ogy, and therefore had a very limited life of its own.
In more recent days, for good or ill, the theological landscape has turned to
hermeneutics as the rescuer and repairer of our multiple troubles in the house
of theological scholarship. But this too has not met with as much happy success
as many had hoped it would. It tended to solve the problem of relating the
practical disciplines to the theoretical, but it did so at the expense of what
previous days had taken as their given, i.e., the biblical and theological con-
structs with their own unique methods and content as the starting point for all
discussion.
Hermeneutical Theory as an Orienting Perspective
There is little doubt that an examination of hermeneutical theory, as Brown-
ing contends, is where the discussion begins today, even if that may not be the
complete answer to defining exactly what constitutes theological scholarship
and what are its criteria. I certainly agree with Browning when he defines
hermeneutics as the "theory of how humans understand (verstehen) their world
and how human understanding or interpretation is related to human action or
pnras."
5
Thus, the hermeneutical process extends, in the new insights offered by
the discipline, and from our own perspective as well, all the way to the
implementation in practical actions and application of what was said.
The most noticeable feature of Browning's essay is the careful avoidance of
all references to the place of the author or speaker in the interpretive process,
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Wal t er C. Kaiser, Jr.
references to truth, or any criteria for "validating" claims or assertions. By
adopting interpretive features mainly from Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur,
Browning has chosen to avoid those balancing features introduced by Emile
Betti and E.D. Hirsch, Jr., that would call for an interaction with those elements
that we contend are missing in much of our scholarly work in theology. Why not
begin the theological endeavor on the analogy of the American system of
jurisprudence that methodologically claims that the text of Scripture is innocent
until it is found offending the historical, psychological, scientific, and experien-
tial evidences to which it made reference? It is not as if provision is not made for
validation of the authorial assertions; on the contrary, this approach dares to put
every theological claim to the appropriate test in order to examine whether or
not the claim is true.
This is not to deny that there are some significant gains in interpretive theory
as set forth by Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur; there are. Gadamer is correct
that "application is neither a subsequent, nor a merely occasional part of the
phenomenon of understanding," however he goes on to say that it ". . .
codetermines it as a whole from the beginning."
6
But that introduces a major
problem: how can the application of the meaning be a. codeterminant of what was
in tended by the speaker or writer that preceded and determined what was said long
before the practical needs of the reading audience applying that text arose in a
thousand new situations? In my judgment, Hirsch is correctthat Gadamer is
confusing the meaning process with the parallel work of naming a significance
for that same text. In the practical application step of the meaning process, the
significance of a text merely names a new relationship that the same principle,
fact, or truth has to any number of new persons, situations, or the like. It can
hardly be a codeterminant of the meaning in the sense that it establishes its truth
intentionality or the substance of its assertions. To usurp that function in the
practical application of the text is ultimately to put an end to all real communi-
cation.
What is most useful here is that the meaning process cannot be declared to
be at an end until it brings out the practical engagement that this text must
contain. It is necessary that we carry the whole hermeneutical project all the way
to its rightful conclusion. Here is the area of our strong agreement.
What is also left unsaid in Gadamer and in Browning's essay is what the
other codeterminant (to use their concept) is, along with application. This we
believe to be the missing role of the author' s truth-intentions or assertions, which
has left theological studies so bankrupt of any unique mission and criteria of its
own.
It is precisely at this point where the truth-intentions of the author should
be introduced as a balancing codeterminant along with application or the whole
aspect of phronesis. No one has had better success at maintaining such a balance
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than the previously mentioned American professor of English at the University
of Virginia, E.D. Hirsch. In his famous distinction, meaning is a return to those
types of assertions that the author was attempting to make, while application is
the naming of a relationship between that meaning and another person, event,
or institution. Just as important for Emile Betti, the Italian historian of law (who
seems to have fathered this line of thought in Hirsch), and for Hirsch himself,
was the fact that meaning is determined and fixed according to those assertions
that the author wished to make, while applications are always multiple, indeter-
minate, and only valid to the degree that they preserve the integrity of the
principle found within the fixed or determined meaning. Therefore, in the name
of doing phronesis and application, we do not wish to swing the pendulum all
the way to the opposite side, thereby abandoning meaning as it was set forth by
the original speaker or writer. Gadamer' s writings have called to our attention
the tragedy of neglecting applications, or of merely attaching them as a subse-
quent or occasional part of the understanding process. But neither can we delete
the assertions of the writernot unless we wish ultimately to lose the whole
possibility of communicating to one another, much less of communicating from
one era or culture to another.
Admittedly, there is another aspect of the current hermeneutical revolution
that has brought enormous easing of tensions in theological scholarship; it is the
admission that our pre-understandings do tend to shape our approach to the
problem of meaning and understanding at all levels of the search for meaning.
However, at some point this hermeneutical circle, or spiral of prejudices and
pre-judgments, these pre-understandings must be put on the table for evalua-
tion and validation. Such Vorverstandnis not only functions in the capacity of
questions that we put to texts and events, wherein our understanding is
progressively refined and reformulated, but at some point in this process even
our prejudices and what we bring to the interpretive process from our heritages
and cultures must be judged by truth standards within that realm of discourse.
Once again the swing of the pendulum is too severe, for all at once there is a
tendency to swing from the assured results of a confident, objective, scientific
Enlightenment-like rationality to a subjective complacency that admits all views
on an equal level as an equal party to the truth without requiring more than that
these prejudices or pre-understandings function as the set from which we view
and question the theological problem or biblical text at hand. It appears that the
pendulum has swung too far for the good of all partners in the conversation. In
the name of pluralism we have demanded that truth be quiescent.
One of the main reasons why the relationship between religious studies and
theological studies has not been clarified as yet rests in this whole area of
hermeneutics. The search for "method" and "objectivity" cannot be equated
60
Wal t er C. Kaiser, Jr.
totally with Paul Ricoeur's metaphor of "distance." While an older rationalism
of modernity was more optimistic about the possibility of achieving such
objectivity through certain realms of science, some forms of postmodernity have
not been able to shake off all vestiges of its older alliances. Browning alludes to
such when he affirms, "Here, the canons of objectivity arising from the social
sciences and historical studies must be respected even if reframed in new ways
"
7
So, all of a sudden, there is a point where distance alone does not solve the
quest for objectivity! Our only question would be this: Why limit the search for
canons of objectivity to the social sciences and historical studies? Especially in
the realm of theological discourse? Surely there are more canons of objectivity
to be introduced than just these two.
This raises an important point: How can the totality of a theological
education be embraced within such a hermeneutical exercise? Is this not the
essence of the reductionistic approach that has widened the rift between
religious studies and theological studies? Without denying some of the better
insights of recent hermeneutical theory, churches and their communities of
scholars appear to be contending that contemporary hermeneutical exercises
simply do not go far enough in aiding the interpretive processes of theology.
Instead of emphasizing "epistemological distance," as Browning does, seminar-
ies and divinity schools are calling for epistemological engagement as theology's
primary function in faith and learning. To contend that only the degree of
distance differentiates religious and theological scholarship would be to adopt
just the opposite posture that some of those, whom the departments of theology
wish to serve, have wanted.
How is such a search possible within the contexts of a confessional group of
scholars who affirm religious commitments, while at the same time assert just as
vigorously that they are in favor of academic freedom? Are not these two
concepts in total opposition? If anything, objectivity and the search for things as
they really are seem to be seriously compromised by those trying to carry both
of these buckets (academic freedom and religious commitments).
The Rootedness of Freedom in Truth
Those in theological studies are quick to answer in the words of Christ that
"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). There
is no freedom without truth and truth cannot be pursued without freedom.
Furthermore, a freedom that permits itself to dispense with the question of truth
can only be a false and illusory freedom.
So how shall we define "freedom"? At its elementary levels, freedom is the
absence of physical constraint, e.g., when a balloon rises without impediments
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or a stone falls freely. But at the higher levels of discussing freedom for
individuals, freedom demands the absence of psychological compulsion, so that
I can flee when I am endangered and duck when I am suddenly confronted with
a foreign object.
8
More importantly, in the realm of human freedom, if that
freedom is not used in the service of common good, such freedom is meaningless
and self-destructive, as it is either reduced to a solipsism, or in the extreme, to
anarchy.
How can a society, much less the academy, be directed by truth if its concept
of the common good and public consensus can be overridden by a majority that
expresses little or no interest in the truth? Only the concept that individuals are
made in the image of God can rescue us from our own bondage, or that of other
groups, classes, nations, or ideologies. "Where such a transcendent source of
human dignity is denied, the way lies open for totalitarianism and other forms
of despotism, in which naked power takes over, so that the interests of a
particular person or group are imposed on the rest of society."
9
If some still protest, "there is no freedom unless there is freedom to act
contrary to so-called transcendent truth as well," the answer is at hand. When
persons act against transcendent truth, they act also against what is good, right,
just, fair, and beautiful in such ways as instituting slavery, or forming totalitar-
ian forms of government, and the like. Ultimately they damage or destroy their
own freedom. Just as a society forfeits its freedoms when it fails to respect
personal dignity, so individuals do the same when they try to liberate them-
selves from moral norms and the state of things as they are in and of themselves.
For example, on the societal level, a public consensus is not the same thing
as a majority opinion. John Courtney Murray explained in We Hold These Truths,
that according to classical tradition of political thought, consensus is a doctrine
or judgment that commands public agreement because of the merits of the
arguments in its favor.
10
It is basically a moral conception that is tutored by truth
and practical wisdom. A majority vote never set the terms or the limits of truth.
Likewise, the notion of public consensus was predicated on the expectation that
the public would acknowledge the merits of the arguments set forth on behalf
of certain principles or judgments.
The "crisis of truth," to which Pope John Paul II referred in Veritatis Splendor
(32) was further defined in Centtesimus Annus (46):
Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and
skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude
which correspond to democratic forms of political life. Those
who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere
to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view,
since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority
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Wal t er C. Kaiser, Jr.
or that it is subject to variation according to different political
trends.
Is it also true that there is no place left for truth in the theological academy? Why
should even the discussion of this topic bring such a severe reaction among
theological colleagues? It is time we were freed from some of our own cultural
captivities on this question.
The suggestion made here is not that anyone knows anything comprehen-
sively or has a special corner on the truth. All that is contended here is that it is
possible to grasp some of the truth, even though we make mistakes and often
must change our minds. Our beliefs must not be placed in permanent suspen-
sion and in the same category as private opinions, for the only thing worth
believing is the truth.
The Present Impasse
Browning finds it impossible to define the nature and criteria of scholarship
in theological education at the present time without, at the same time, locating
theological education in relation to religious studies.
11
But it is here that we find
the admission that theological studies have indeed often been overwhelmed by
criteria from religious studies, most frequently criteria that were often governed
by every other discipline but theology, frequently judged to be more "scientific,"
"historical," and "critical" than what theology could do in and of itself.
Was this not the embarrassing charge that Thomas C. Oden made? He
opined:
Each discipline of theological education, now awash in dated
enlightenment assumptions, finds itself desperately seeking an
alternative to the premises of Triune reasoning, incarnation,
resurrection, and scriptural revelation [T]he pattern of the
so-called scientific study of religion has gradually flooded the
seminary, discipline by discipline . . . . Here is where the
reductionistic empirical and rational methods of enlighten-
ment modernity have infested the sanctuaries of theological
education.
12
Accordingly, the question must be asked: Are the thematic tests (whose
definitions are not given in the paper being examined here) that Browning
proposes adequate to distinguish what is "authentic" from "inauthentic," and
sufficient to guide any particular religious tradition?
13
Theology is, in part, about
making judgments, but the issue of authority and truth once again are deleted
from the discourse. Why is this so? How can they be deleted when the commu-
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nity of faith expects more of her thinkers in this area than she has traditionally
received.
The failure of many religious studies programs to reckon with the distinc-
tiveness of theological method, as compared with historical, philosophical,
literary, or psychological methods of inquiry, has led to such a homogenization
of theological method that the main object of inquiry can hardly be recognized
as the study of God. Once again, the stinging rebuke of Oden is worth recalling:
. . . [M]uch of what has been studied in liberated religion under
the heading of "theology" has nothing whatsoever to do with
God or God' s revelation or God' s church or the worship of God
. . . . There is no assumed requirement that "theo"logy thus
conceived need have anything to do with the revealed God . .
. . All this under liberated rules is called theology.
14
Even allowing for a fair amount of hyperbole, Oden surely penetrates to the
heart of our problem of the nature and criteria of theological scholarship. It is
time that both religious studies programs and departments of theology in
seminaries come to terms with the fact that theology is, as Oden pleads in that
same context, a unique academic enterprise with its own distinct subject
matterGod; its own methodological premiserevelation; its own method of
inquiry into its unique subject matterthe exegesis of the revealed word of God;
its own criteria of accountabilityresponsible handling of the biblical text
within the context of the witness of the Holy Spirit and the conciliar work of the
church over the ages; its own way of analyzing culturewith an appreciation
of divine providence and an appropriate bracketing of worldly powers; and its
own logican internal consistency with the revealed truth of God verified by all
the external evidences from natural revelation including the historical, logical,
literary, existential, and scientific.
15
Such a description of the nature and criteria for doing theology should not
appear to be any more remarkable, continued Oden, than requiring that study
in a department of mathematics should demand that talk not be about social
criticism or drama, but about things like theorems and equations of arithmetic.
For close to three decades now, too many "shirttail" subjects to theology and
extraneous methodologies have been masquerading as legitimate substitutes
for the decent study of theology. This has contributed in no small way to our
present crisis and dilemma. However, one of the most hopeful signs is that we
are now able to talk openly about this situation.
In the meantime, the vacuum that was created when the Biblical Theology
Movement was declared to be moribund, was quickly filled by such a plethora
of methodologies and subjects that no single definition for what constituted
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Wal t er C. Kaiser, Jr.
theology, or how it was to be done, could fit all that has grown up in the interim.
Such latitudinarianism could not be exalted as a new mark of triumph for
openness in theological inquiry. Rather, what had at first been thought to be a
new openness to the fresh winds of scholarship eventually turned out t obe near
anarchy and a total loss of the subject matter itself. God himself died, not under
the scrutiny of the scholar's magnifying glass, but from sheer neglect and total
avoidance of the object of almost all study. And now with the collapse of
modernity, in these days of postmodernity, mortals themselves are practically
in a state of rigor mortis.
More is at stake than the issue of definitions. Is it true, as Browning seems
to assume, that students arrive at our institutions with a particular religious
tradition "al ready. . . shaped"
16
in them? Is it also true that for a vast majority of
students today, this would be a gratuitous assumption? All too many aspiring
scholars in the field of theology have minimalistic understandings and apprecia-
tions of any theological or ecclesiastical orientation prior to their enrollment in
programs of religious or theological study. Let it also be said, that from most
theological perspectives, religious formation is never complete at any stage in
life; instead, it invites persons with demonstrated gifts of understanding and
aspirations to enter into this formative process as a life-time calling. The
demands and commitments for such a life-long program of scholarly inquiry are
not fully described or expected in theological programs as they once were when
the "parson" was known to be among the best educated in town because he or
she had given over his or her life to study as a pattern of living.
The Scholarly Tasks of Theology
Browning lists four scholarly tasks for the purpose of "cultural and religious
reconstruction": (1) descriptive studies, (2) historical studies, (3) critical studies,
and (4) strategic or practical studies. But will the mastery of this list of tasks
produce Christian theologians, and will their co-workers in theological educa-
tion be ready to exercise spiritual leadership in guiding the life of the contem-
porary church? Has the "reconstruction" here so outdistanced what it was
seeking to serve that the object of its services no longer recognizes the gifts
proffered to it?
To be specific, nowhere has Browning acknowledged what most theolo-
gians in the history of Christianity would have deemed most essential, i.e., that
theology is talk about God as it is recovered from the revelation of God in
Scripture. Rather than beginning with a description that is "thick" with "ques-
tions and problems resident in [the individual' s and group' s] situations
questions that should be addressed theologically,"
17
a "thick" foundation ought
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to be laid in the proper object (God) and materials (revelation) of theology. Only
after this basis for theological discourse has been established, can the questions
and concerns from a diversity of contexts come into view with a distinctive
contribution from theology. Otherwise, the discussion could be carried on apart
from any supposed religious horizonas indeed it has tended to occur in the
past three decades in many departments of theology and religious studies.
"[T]he central resources of the Christian tradition" are subjected appar-
ently, according to Browning's second type of scholarly tasks, only to historical
inquiry. But why this limitation? Especially since it is charged with "the central
resources" of our tradition? Is any place left in religious studies for conciliar,
confessional, biblical, or ecclesial theology? It is precisely at this point where the
much discussed pending rupture between the seminary and the church has been
exasperated. To put the question even more precisely: Will the concerns of
confessional and churchly theology really be welcomed in the typical religious
studies program? Or is the need for critical distance so important to the scholarly
task that it would warrant its substitution for subjects and methods thought to
be traditionally connected with the scholarly task?
The call for both internal and external critical reflection on the central
themes of the Christian tradition is at once encouraging and alarming. At first,
it appeared that the test for truth would make an appearance in the halls of
theological scholarship after all; alas, however, it turns out that this test is closer
to "certain forms of pragmatism." Though we are assured that "there are ways
to gain relative degrees of distance from our embeddedness in these situa-
tions,"
18
none of them was outlined except to suggest that science, reason, and
experience are able to give "fragmentary ways" of testing and refining our
theology. Does this mean that the theological disciplines have nothing unique to
offer by way of content or procedures?
We feel differently, however, about the matter of the so-called strategic
studies, or practical theology. Here we found ourselves in full agreement with
Browning that practical theology should be "integrally related to the entire cycle
of theological education."
19
Our only caveat would be to demur over the
assertion that "application drives" the understanding process from the begin-
ning, thereby giving us the practice-theory-practice model. This takes us back to
the hermeneutical problem mentioned above, i.e., that the author' s intentional-
ity and the discipline's right to set the agenda for the terms of study are offset by
the role of strategic studies, now being given a codeterminative emphasis in the
meaning process. Nevertheless, the older theory-practice dichotomy is also
unacceptable. Rather than having separate moments for either theory or prac-
tice, it would be much better to have both practice and theory interpenetrating
each other and both going on simultaneously, much as theological education
originally was practiced in the manse and parsonage prior to its institutionaliza-
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Wal t er C. Kaiser, Jr.
tion in the 18th and 19th centuries in the colleges and seminaries of Canada and
the United States.
Definition of Theological Scholarship
Browning has striven mightily to identify for the theological community just
what constitutes excellent scholarship in our common task. The argument is that
it is the intersection and complex use of all four types of theological studies he
has outlined: the descriptive, the historical, the critical, and the strategic or
practical. Along with these tasks, he calls for the use of various empirical
disciplines, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, and economics.
While Browning assures us that such studies are never "independent of Chris-
tian horizons," or "totally independent of practical questions,"
20
it all begins to
sound somewhat patronizing to what is "genuinely theological," or even
biblical, in our distinctive task.
In the drive to set acceptable standards for scholarly excellence, a goal to
which almost everyone in the theological enterprise aspires, suddenly we are
introduced to "the canons of objectivity arising from the social sciences and
historical studies."
21
Why must theology be harnessed with these disciplines as
the first order of academic achievement in order to prove its legitimacy or
scholarly character? And why call these the canons oobjectivity after apparently
resisting the exercise of the criteria of truth in setting forth the orienting nature
of hermeneutics? To say that these are the "rules governing excellence in
descriptive and historical studies"
22
seems to set the boundaries of acceptable
theological work solely under these two areas of public recognition that bring
their own set of criteria and character to the enterprise. Why is it that theology
cannot first declare what she is, or is not, based on the criteria and terms of her
own turf as a first order of business?
Browning appears to conclude on exactly this kind of concessive note by
asserting that:
Criteria for accreditation and criteria governing financial awards
or grants should view theological scholarship as genuinely
theological, and not historical, descriptive or even normative in
some non theological way What distinguishes a type or style
of theological scholarship is the moment or step [sic] in which
it specializes, even though the other moments are present to
varying degrees in the background.
23
What is meant by denying theology normativity "in some nontheological way"
is unclear, but the rest of what is affirmed here is right on the mark. It recognizes
what we had been hoping would be said throughout this essay: Yes, "Theologi-
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cal scholarship is an integrated reflective process"
24
specializing in its own type
and style of scholarship. The other four moments of interrelated scholarship are
here properly consigned to the "background," even though they previously
seemed to have occupied a preemptive and defining role in determining what
was scholarly and excellent in our craft.
It is precisely this type of readjustment that evangelicals believe is neces-
sary, for they share a general discontent with the failed Enlightenment methods
as a determination for what passes as being scholarly and what does not. Indeed,
it is true that:
The postmodern critique of hermeneutical criticism (as seen in
Peter Stuhlmacher, Martin Hinge, Eta Linnemann, Brevard
Childs) stands poised to speak of the normative canon and the
plain sense of Scripture . . . . The richest examples of classic
Protestant hermeneutics (such as Martin Chemnitz, Abraham
Calovius, John Quenstedt, Johann Gerhard, Martin Bucer, John
Owen, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and Charles Finney)
were keen observers and critics of speculative historical ap-
proaches that violate the text . . . . Postmodern evangelical
consciousness does not cower or recoil from this methodologi-
cal fray as did pietism. It is willing to play devil's advocate, to
enter the critical debate, and to stand ready when necessary to
announce that the emperor (in this case the uncritical knowl-
edge elite) has no clothes.
25
It is more than strange that both this Council on Theological Scholarship and
Research and indeed The Association of Theological Schools should be tackling
the issues of standards and criteria of excellence in the very generation that has
all but declared that such searches that imply an objectivity and or any type of
normativity are no longer available to postmodern persons. But if excellence is
to be achieved in our common enterprise and if definitions have any force
whatsoever, both this Council and the Association must, in a certain sense, be
considered counter-culture at this juncture.
Therefore let it be affirmed that the nature of theological scholarship will
include the following: theology has its own distinctive subject matterGod; its
own distinctive starting point and source of subject materialrevelation; its
unique method of examining its subject matterexegesis of the Scripture in
light of the witness of all the evidences, historical, cultural, scientific along with
the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit; and its own criteria of scholarly excel-
lenceaccountability to the canonical text and the work of the conciliar councils
in the history of the church.
26
While theology also employs the validating process
of internal consistency with revealed truth, it is not to say that it may disregard
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Wal t er C. Kaiser, Jr.
all other tests and forms of logic. It only objects to be being defined out of
existence by such preemptive strictures as the elimination of the supernatural
from the discussion.
What is called for here is that the drought of the absence of God from
theological discussion should be endedespecially, in the name of excellence in
theological scholarship. Moreover, the level of engagement in which theological
research is carried on must be no less than that of any of its departmental peers
in the universityall evidence and all facts bearing on the issues discussed and
studied must be engaged. Even though theology carries its own brand of unique
methodology, subject matter, and criteria, just as every other discipline does, it
must not request a special exemption from her involvement in the full array of
methods and disciplines in the academy. Neither must it think itself such an
academic orphan that it must jettison its own distinctiveness in order to gain
visibility and acceptance in the host schools. After all, most of these universities
began with theology having a central role when they were founded, so why
should they be overly apologetic for its reappearance on the scene? In more
recent times, theology has tried to climb back on board at the university, only to
be often rebuffed for also espousing confessional attachments, or for too
frequently coming out at the end of its research at some of the same points where
it entered the argumentas if this same state of affairs did not occasionally
happen for many non-confessing participants in the university' s other disci-
plines.
What makes religious studies scholarly is exactly what makes theological
studies worthy of the same encomium. Once the distinctives of the subject have
been taken into account, and that aspect of modern hermeneutics accounted for,
the tests for excellence are the same as those for any other educational and
scholarly enterprise.
ENDNOTES
1. See Browning's essay in this volume, 4.
2. Thomas C. Oden, Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements (Nashville: Abingdon,
1995), 93, speaks of "the distinctive modem ecumenical sin: disdain for evangelicals" in
his chapter on "The McGovernization of Ecumenical Gridlock."
3. See, for example, the thesis of George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American
University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford,
1994).
4. James Smart, The Past, Present, and Future of Biblical Theology (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1979), 94-95.
5. Browning, op. cit., 2.
6. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 289 as cited
by Browning, 6.
69
An Evangelical Critique and Plan
7. Browning, op. cit., 9.
8. These distinctions and the general thrust of what follows owes much to the article
by Avery Dulles, "John Paul and the Truth about Freedom," First Things 55 (Aug/Sept
1995):36-41.
9. Ibid., 40.
10. John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1985).
11. Browning, op. cit., 4.
12. Oden, Requiem, 63.
13. Browning, op. cit., 5.
14. Oden, Requiem, 44.
15. Similar conclusions are reached in the vast literature that has emerged in the last 10
years, most recently summarized by David H. Kelsey in Between Athens and Berlin: The
Theological Education Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993). For example, on page 3
Kelsey notes that: " . . . first . . . the literature reveals deep incoherences in the way
theological education is, in actual practice, theologically conceived; and second, that the
literature sharply focuses much of what is at stake in different understandings of ' the
nature of theology.' "
16. Browning, op. cit., 5.
17. Ibid., 7.
18. Ibid., 8.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 9.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Oden, Requiem, 133-34.
26. Modeled, in part, after Oden, Requiem, 43-44.
70
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